Why are there so few Black sperm donors in the US? -podcast

When Angela Stepancic decided to have a baby with her wife, the couple were full of hope. Her partner was keen to carry their child, so the pair began looking for potential sperm donors to help them conceive. But they soon hit a problem: at the four main cryobanks in the US, there were only a dozen Black sperm donors.

The reporter and assistant professor of journalism Lisa Armstrong explains to Hannah Moore that Black women in the US are twice as likely to face infertility, and half as likely to seek help for it. The lack of donors is one more barrier Black people can face when trying to start a family. There is too little research into the reasons for the shortage, explains Armstrong, but a complicated application system and invasive questioning are thought to be part of the problem, as well as a history of systematic racism.

In the end, says Stepancic, she was so frustrated by the lack of black donors and the industry's lackluster attempts to combat it that she set up her own cryobank for Black, Brown and Indigenous people. She realized, she says, that 'we need to do this for ourselves'.

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